Earlier this year, I was asked if I ever thought about working with a different medium. The short answer is “yes”.
The slightly less short answer is “yes but no thank you”.
I want to share a bit about my childhood and teen years to explain how I came to my chosen medium of stained glass/mosaics.
I’ve always considered myself creative. When I was in kindergarten, I had a teacher who pulled my mom aside after class to share a drawing that I had created that day. It was a drawing of a bird in a lake, drawn from an overhead perspective. Apparently, I was the only one who thought to draw the subject from that perspective (a POV that wasn’t mine) and that was something quite special. I don’t share this to make you think that I was a baby art genius or savant. But from that day foreword, I was creative.
As a child, I was always making. I wanted to be a fashion designer and I filled binders and binders of outfit ideas. My mom bought me a sewing machine for Christmas, and I started to make my own designs. I had a brief baking-period which included a lot of fondant (bleh). The owner of my childhood day camp gifted me a few of her old canvases so I was also a painter for a time. As an avid reader, it only made sense for me to dabble in writing so at 15, I wrote a present-day adaptation to Dracula.
Then there was 3D expression, an elective that I took as a high school freshman. I have a vivid memory of taking apart a VCR player and creating a sneaker with the parts. This sparked an interest in sculpture and using found objects in my work. And then toward the end of my high school career, I found an interest in film. I joined the Robotics team and worked on the media crew making YouTube videos and promotional videos.
I was creative. An artist? No.
In 2016, I got my first full-time office job as a Visual Designer at a non-profit. As adult life often does, my life started to feel too routine. I was bored! What was I supposed to do after work? In typical Dany-fashion, I came up with a creative challenge. I would buy $100 worth of stained glass, 30 wood panels and mosaic glue and post my work online every day for 3 months. (This was my version of the 100-day project).
It was over the next few months that I started to shift from creative to artist.
Could I have chosen a different medium? Sure. I think it’s clear by looking at my past that I have tried a lot of different mediums. Mosaics were just the thing that stuck. I couldn’t — I can’t — get enough of it! Finding your thing is a lot of experimentation and just doing what feels right next. What sparks joy? And when you find that thing, keep going!
